


Edgewater Blues

by ghoulblogging



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: AU, Edgewater, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hawthorne Lives and Bails, Strangers to Lovers, co-habitation, god im so bad at tags, stranded in edgewater
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:29:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23616010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghoulblogging/pseuds/ghoulblogging
Summary: Saved from Cryo, Vivian Reynolds finds herself alone on a mysterious planet, with her experience between waking up and landing fuzzy at best. She's stranded in Edgewater, a boring town that somehow manages to still feel hostile to outsiders like her. Luckily, there's someone else in town who feels trapped there too...
Relationships: Female Captain/Maximillian DeSoto, The Captain/Maximillian DeSoto
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	Edgewater Blues

**Author's Note:**

> A little AU thing as a break from my big ass fic. Vivian here is the same as captain Vivian from my other fanfic Between Each Silence, but you don't need to have read that to still enjoy this one!
> 
> AU where Alex Hawthorne drops the beacon and then bounced, leaving the "captain" to thier own devices.

The man who launched her into space had given her instructions. Her eyesight had still been fuzzy since she was recovering from cryo sleep, but she had been able to make out some of his instructions, even if the reasons why she was supposed to follow them remained a mystery. He had told her that there had been a problem with the ship, the Hope, and that she had been frozen for seventy years, but there was no time to unpack all that before she was shot down to the planet below at god knows how many miles per hour.

Vivian's first few steps out of her pod were shaky, and she was still groggy, but her eyesight was returning. She blinked in the bright light on this new world, looking around and seeing things that were familiar but not. There was grass, but not the shade she remembered. The sky was dotted with stars, but also streaked with rings that must have belonged to this planet. After her first few steps, she quickly discovered that she had already failed step one of her instructions, there was no Alex Hawthorne to meet her. Instead, there was a note, Vivian pulled it off the homing beacon she had landed next to. 

_Had to attend to some business, will come back when I can. - AH_

The situation was turning out remarkably poorly, but sitting here next to the cryo pod wasn't going to improve things, and so Vivian Reynolds made her way cautiously into the wilds of Emerald Vale. Everything around her was strange, the plants, the animals, it would have been fascinating, if it wasn't so terrifying. She wasn't really good in a crisis, which is why she had changed her specialty in medical school to research rather than seeing actual patients. At this rate, she didn’t have much of a choice here but to tough it out.

When she finally came across another human being, Vivian nearly jumped for joy. A young man who introduced himself as Guard Pelham, he was holed up in a cave, after being injured in a fight. "I'm a doctor," she said before her nerves over treating a real live person kicked in, "let me take a look." Vivian took the opportunity to ask him a ton of questions while she worked to clean and bandage his wound, questions that he very clearly thought were strange, and couldn't even really help that much with.

"Are you with Auntie Cleo's? We're not supposed to talk to them, I'm required by contract to look out for any potential corporate espionage." Vivian's denial and confused look seemed to be enough to convince him that she wasn't a corporate spy. After a little while, she had him more or less patched up, and was pretty surprised with how quickly her memories from her schooling had set in. Soon enough she was hoofing it through the wilds again, this time with Guard Pelham in tow, on the road to a place called Edgewater. Vivian was glad for the company, and glad for the prospect of anywhere she could try to get a grip on what was going on, so she followed his lead towards civilization.

Edgewater, it turned out, was a walled city that smelled thoroughly like fish. Pelham went ahead inside, but Vivian stopped to have a conversation with the poor gravedigger out front. Even though the conversation was brief, it managed to raise some red flags for Vivian, though he was pleasant enough to talk to. There were a hell of a lot of graves for such a small settlement. "I'd say your best bet is to see if you can talk to Mr. Tobson, but he's a busy man. If you have more questions about Edgewater, there's always the town Vicar, you'll find him in the church, naturally." Vivian thanked him and agreed to the small job he offered her. Collecting grave fees sounded ethically dubious at beat, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and she needed something to buy the necessities with.

The young guard had given her some pocket change in return for her help, and along with pawning off some of the stuff she had managed to scavenge, Vivian was able to get a passable set of work clothes and something to eat before her pockets ran dry. Even after changing out of her cryo suit, she still got looks as she started to explore the place. It was probably unavoidable in a town as small as this one, by her estimation it looked like the population was under one-hundred for sure, and likely even under fifty, but still it made her feel a bit uneasy to stick out like a sore thumb. The local bar didn't offer much help, the barkeep and the patrons weren't particularly chatty, Vivian couldn’t help but be friendly, but she was definitely hitting barriers here that her usually winning smile could get her past.

The cannery didn’t yield much better results, the guards out front turned her away, saying that Mr. Tobson was too busy to see random strangers, but that she could check back tomorrow. Their tone didn’t make her feel hopeful about getting an appointment the next day. As time ticked on she was beginning to worry more and more about how she was going to manage to stay afloat here, barred from most potential means of making some money, and on top of that having no place to stay. Her last bastion of hope was the church, which she had perhaps been avoiding. Vivian had never been religious before, and she wasn't really planning on starting now. Churches were supposed to be charitable though, at least ideally, now she was hoping that applied to the OSI church here in Edgewater.

There were a few worshippers sitting silently in pews as she entered the building, and for once none of them seemed to take a notice to her, too wrapped up in their own prayers. It was kind of nice to not be the subject of scrutiny, even if only for a few moments. In contrast to the gritty streets of the town, the interior of the church was immaculate. Vivian suddenly felt very shabby, and started even feeling even more so as the vicar of the establishment entered the room. His eyes scanned the room and settled on her, and just like that her moment of not being noticed was over. "Haven't seen you around here before. Spacer's Choice didn't send some new workers, did they?"

"Uh, no.. sorry." Despite her predicament, Vivian's first instinct was still to apologize. The man before her looked serious and intimidating, though his casual tone seemed welcoming enough. "I'm ah, well it's complicated, and god would you even believe me…" She trailed off, the last few hours had been kinda a panic, though she had done her best to keep a level head. But this whole situation was crazy, right? 

A few people who had been sitting in prayer started to look over at them, making Vivian start to panic again, and visibly so. The serious vicar must have noticed, he gave her what she assumed he assumed was a reassuring look. This was certainly an oddity for him, he was certainly intrigued, but was hoping this stranger was not going to make a scene. "How about we talk somewhere more private miss…"

"Reynolds, and actually it's Dr. Reynolds," her force of habit reply came quickly, but she instantly regretted how snobby it sounded. "But just call me Vivian. And somewhere more private sounds great." 

The vicar nodded and led her into a side room, where he gestured for her to take a seat. "I'm Vicar Maximilian De Soto," he said as he sat down across from her, behind an expensive looking desk, "But seeing as we are already on first name terms, Max will suffice. What's troubling you?"

Vivian took a moment to look around the room and exhale. Max's office was just as immaculate as the rest of the church. "So, I'm from Earth," she began.

"Well, we're all from Earth, I'd you trace things back far enough," he replied, sitting back in his chair. It was nice to have a reprieve from the tedium of everyday life in Edgewater, even if it was a confused visiting stranger. 

"No, no let me finish…." she replied, sounding more agitated than she would have liked. This was the first person who was really stopping to listen to her crazy story, if she fucked this up it could be a problem. "Like, straight from Earth. I was just, defrosted is the word I guess, and dumped here."

The expression on Max's face was inscrutable for a moment, before it turned to a look of disbelief. "That's impossible, the last people sent here were on the Hope colony ship, and that ship vanished seventy years ago."

"That's the one!" Vivian replied, before starting to rummage through her small bag. She pulled out her cryo suit and placed it on the desk, flipping it so the emblem of the Hope was facing up. "See? A few hours ago I woke up, and well, everything was kinda fuzzy after that, but then I landed here." She looked at him expectantly, hoping he would believe her.

Max was quiet for a moment, he picked up the suit, examining the back of it. “Law be damned…” he murmured. He looked up at her again, though this time his expression was more sincere.

“So you believe me?” Vivian replied, leaning forward in her seat. 

He hesitated a bit, but ultimately nodded, “I believe you. As far fetched as the story is, this suit of yours, as well as the bewildered expression on your face this entire time, have convinced me.” Max laid the cryo suit back on the desk, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms. He watched her carefully for a moment. She was an unknown variable, they had only just met, but he was inclined to help her.

“Oh thank god… so far no one here has barely given me the time of day. I have no idea what to do here, I have no money, no friends...” she trailed off a bit, and her expression shifted to one of panic, “I’m screwed.”

Max frowned, he could certainly sympathize with being stranded in Edgewater, though he was fortunate enough to be well taken care of by the OSI. Even if he hated living in this backwater town, he didn’t want for anything, except maybe something to eat other than Saltuna. “I’ll help you,” he said after a moment of silence had passed between them, “You can stay with me while we figure out what to do with you.”

Vivian looked visibly relieved, and for the first moment since landing here the wild look in her eyes faded. She still had no idea what she was gonna do here, but this was at least a start. "Thank you Max, god… I'll do whatever it takes to make it up to you, I'll cook, clean, whatever." 

He waved his hand in a calming gesture, "I would be a poor vicar if I were to let someone who came in seeking my help languish away in the streets…" Truly though, he wasn't doing all this solely out of the good of his own heart. Things in Edgewater were exceptionally boring. He acted the kindly priest, and did his duties, but mostly kept to himself doing his work with the equation. Any diversion was welcome after years with only the drone like townsfolk to interact with. "I'm scheduled to give a sermon in a few minutes, but then we can head out. You’re welcome to stay and listen, of course."

It felt rude to decline, especially after the lengths he was going to help her, so Vivian agreed despite her own reservations about religion. She took a seat near the back of the church, still feeling very much out of place as residents of the town began to file in. Thankfully, they didn't turn their attention on her this time. So she sat in the back, alone in her thoughts. Her panic had mostly subsided, but worry still nagged at her, after all she was going to be staying with a complete stranger on an unfamiliar planet. Things that seemed too good to be true often were, and while she trusted the kindly vicar, Vivian wasn't stupid. People lied, people had their ulterior motives.

She was snapped out of her internal monologue as Max started to speak. Her plan had been to sit there and space out, but she couldn't help but listen. Most of what was coming out of his mouth seemed like a foreign language to her, something about an architect, and science, but not in the ways she understood those things, but even so she felt compelled to listen. If anything, he had a good speaking voice and a powerful presence. Wasn't bad to look at either, even though in a church, outside of anything she ever knew, was possibly the most inappropriate time to be ogling someone. He was saying something about hard work when he made eye contact with her, and Vivian quickly tried to look like she was actively listening rather than daydreaming about the hot priest.

After he was finished and they were walking from the church to his home, Max asked her what she thought of the sermon. "I feel like it was all a little beyond my understanding," she replied, deciding that being honest was probably the best course. "Though you definitely have a talent for public speaking."

"Thank you," he replied, "Even if you are new to the thoughts of the OSI, I could tell I had your attention." He smiled in a way that made her wonder if he had noticed her staring before.


End file.
